My daily quest for One Beautiful Thing (OBT)

For Your Eyes Only: The Secret Life of Superheroes

The Secret Life of Heroes is a series of brilliant illustrations that speculates about what our favorite superheroes (and other iconic characters) get up when no one is looking. The artist, Greg Guillemin, describes himself as an “Eclectic Graphical Gamer.” His love of comic books started at 11, and it really shows in his work. Not just because of the instantly recognizable characters, but also because of the wittiness of the way he’s posed them. There are loads of jokes here if you know enough about the characters to get them.

His subjects remind me a bit of one of my very early posts, “Stunning Watercolors With a Sense of Humor (I Think)” about the work of Lora Zombie, but the look of his art is much more clean and closer to traditional comic book style. And of course, he’s much funnier. He also gets more into superhero erotica, so browse his site with caution. According to Guillemin, the erotica is where this all started for him.

16 thoughts on “For Your Eyes Only: The Secret Life of Superheroes”

Oh my goodness! These are spectacular. The Miracle Toddler looked over my shoulder and shouted the name of every superhero as I scrolled through the images. I will need to check out his site without a sidekick. 😉

Love it! I want a print of several of them. When I’m not at work I will check out the others. I especially like the dripping ketchup and the gum on the shoe. I call these kind of things “this never happens in the movies.” Things like you can’t find your keys but there’s no comic or dramatic payoff. Or you pick up the dogs to dog sit for the kids and the dogs have fleas. Or your computer mouse stops working (and yes, I checked the batteries) so you spend time trying to move the cursor with your mind instead of getting work done. (All of which have happened to me recently.) Not part of any story line. Just one more thing, completely lacking in greater meaning, to deal with.

I used to work for someone who would listen to my varied klutz-related tales of woe (i.e. I once gave myself twin black eyes by kicking myself in the face with someone else’s foot), and say “The things that happen to you shouldn’t happen to a dog.”